


Yukisa Week: Fortune Favors the Bold

by Szilvia (Eyrine)



Series: JR & SIH Event Entries [2]
Category: Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Dating, Insecurity, M/M, Online Dating, Painting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29557074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyrine/pseuds/Szilvia
Summary: After another series of swipes left, Kisa was starting to believe that the app was running out of pretty faces to show him. He was tempted to just keep swiping left on the pictures without even bothering to look at them, until he came across one that made his hyperactive finger freeze.That can't be real. No way. That's gotta be a fake account.My entry forYukisa Week 2021.Prompts: popular, date, paint, birthday, bath, coffee, prince, future
Relationships: Kisa Shouta/Yukina Kou
Series: JR & SIH Event Entries [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110056





	1. Popular & Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: **popular** | **date**
> 
> I'm not gonna combine the chapters to make a full story like I did for Romantica Week, because some of these will be canon universe and others will be alternate universe. But I hope you'll enjoy it all the same.

The last thing Kisa ever expected to install on his phone was a dating app, but there it was: the infamous little flame icon, positioned at the very top of the screen. Tinder wasn't the most popular dating app in Japan, although it had gotten more recognition over time. The majority of single men and women in Japan, understandably, preferred to use dating apps designed by those who understood their culture. Sadly, most of these apps exclusively catered to the heterosexual community, making them useless to a man like Kisa.

His finger hovered above the screen, hesitant, like the icon was an actual flame that could burn the tip. Why was he like this? At the age of thirty he was acting like a nervous teenage boy who was about to confess to his crush. He'd always been happy to have avoided such situations in high school. Looks like he'd celebrated too early.

The truth was, he kind of knew why he kept putting it off. There were certain... tricks he liked to use for picking up guys at the club—tricks that involved not being entirely honest about his age and occupation. In his defense though, no one had ever guessed him to be above the age of twenty-two, and even when he told them that he was much older than he looked only one person had believed him. Somewhere along the way, he'd decided to just roll with it.

With a dating app, it wasn't that simple. He had the option to lie about his age, sure, but there would be no going back. The convenience of "altering" his age to match a person's preferences (if they liked him young, he was only eighteen; if they were looking for an older guy, he could be in his mid-twenties or even closer to his real age) wasn't available to him on a service where his age was about as private as the name of a store clerk. The idea was practically the same: wearing a tag with your personal data on it and waiting for someone to start talking to you.

_Gotta stop stalling. I've already installed the damned app, might as well see what it's got to offer._

It took five more minutes before he actually tapped the icon and another fifteen to set up his dating profile, which should have taken longer and would have if he hadn't already selected his best pictures and thought out his bio in advance. That wasn't weird, right? He just wanted to prevent sharing too much information. He didn't like talking about himself.

There was a small list of preferences that could be set to optimize the search for potential matches. Other than specifying the preferred gender, Kisa didn't want to get too picky with it. He changed the age range to twenty to forty. For a relationship, an age gap of ten years or more could be rather risky.

Luckily Kisa wasn't looking for anything too serious. He never cared much for long-lasting relationships and saw no reason to change his views on commitment anytime soon. Simple flings and one-night stands were much more enjoyable; he could get as much dick as he wanted without all the tiresome drama and emotional baggage. Just a quick fuck and then move on—plain as simple.

Ten years was fine, no, perfect. Second-guessing himself wasn't going to help him get laid.

People on the internet had said that Tinder was easy to use and it turned out they hadn't been lying. The app was surprisingly quick in giving Kisa a selection of profiles to skim through. The swiping left and right method was ideal for him, because he tended to judge guys almost entirely by their looks already. That may have been shallow, but who in their right mind would want to fuck an ugly dude? Not him. He was relentless, swiping left on anyone who didn't please the eye. He didn't even bother looking at their other pictures if the first one left him cold.

Most of the men he did swipe right on lived at least ten kilometers away, but that didn't matter to him. In fact, Kisa preferred not to sleep with guys who lived nearby. Nothing sucked more than running into a one-night stand who didn't grasp the meaning of a "one-night stand". He hated persistent people. On the other hand, he loved a pretty face. The real problem was that sometimes, the most beautiful people turned out to be the most persistent ones. Something about that seemed wrong. Why would someone who could get anyone they wanted be so desperate? That didn't make sense.

After another series of swipes left, Kisa was starting to believe that the app was running out of pretty faces to show him. He was tempted to just keep swiping left on the pictures without even bothering to look at them, until he came across one that made his hyperactive finger freeze.

_That can't be real. No way. That's gotta be a fake account._

The guy in the picture looked way too attractive to be using a dating app. He had playfully styled light brown hair and warm brown eyes... and were those piercings on his ear? Sure looked like it. His smile was absolutely radiant too.

If the cup of coffee in the guy's hands—Kisa didn't have a thing for hands, but _man_ , even those were attractive somehow—was any indication, the picture had been taken at a cafe. With any other person, it would've been believable that they'd asked a friend to take their picture. Not with this one. This one looked like freaking model and Kisa was pretty sure that was exactly what the guy was. How else would he manage to look so good in a plain white button-up shirt?

Kisa checked the information under the picture. _Kou, 21._ The guy looked pretty mature for someone in his early twenties, but Kisa was in no position to be suspicious of people not looking their age. He found it hard to believe it was a real profile though.

He took a peek at the other pictures on the profile. There were two where the guy was hanging out with a bunch of guys and girls who appeared to be around the same age as him and a few of him by himself. The one that really stood out was a picture of him in front of a canvas with a brush in his hand. Only the back of the canvas was visible, which was a clever move; it invited people to ask what he was painting in that picture. Even Kisa had to admit he was a little intrigued. Only a little though—he was mainly paying attention to how tall and fit the guy looked.

Seeing how personal the pictures were compared to the first one gave Kisa some faith again. Maybe this Kou guy actually was trying to meet someone. Unfortunately, Kisa wouldn't stand a chance with him. Even if by some miracle they did match, he couldn't expect to get anything out of it. People who were that good-looking could easily get hundreds of matches in less than a month.

All things considered, the odds weren't in his favor and yet he wanted to give it a shot. After all, that was how dating apps worked: you needed to be willing to take a risk if you wanted to get matches. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? At the end of the day, Kou was just another name on the list of men Kisa wanted to sleep with. If he couldn't have that, he'd move on like he always did.

Kisa almost swiped left on accident, but corrected himself just in time. He sighed and dropped his phone on his bed. It was getting late. Maybe he should save the rest of the profiles for another time and get some rest. Takano had already given him a warning earlier that week for dozing off in the middle of a meeting.

First though, he'd have to close the Tinder app. He didn't want _that_ to be the first thing to show up the next time he checked his phone.

But when he turned his attention back to the screen, his well-intended plan went right down the drain. His eyes went wide as he read the message displayed in big, white letters on the solid black background.

**It's a match!**

He practically launched himself at his phone, picking it up with shaking hands and almost dropping it again. Reading the message again word for word, he concluded that his eyes weren't deceiving him. The second line only further confirmed what he could barely believe. _  
_

**You and Kou have liked each other.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took some liberties with these prompts, see?
> 
> I looked up what Japanese Tinder profiles look like, but I couldn't find if they display a person's family name or given name. I found some pictures that seemed to display the given name only so I went with that.


	2. Paint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: ~~phone~~ | **paint**

Kisa grimaced as he inspected his failed attempt at creating art. What was supposed to be a simplified representation of nature's beauty inspired by the mountainous landscape of Hokkaido looked more like the work of a child that had been finger painting for an hour. The trees in the foreground weren't in proportion with the mountains in the background, the colors were either too bright or too dark and the composition in its entirety sucked.

Everything had been going all right until Yukina suddenly got a call from a friend. He had blurted out an apology and promised to put his phone on silent, because apparently even the faintest sound could rob an artist of a moment of inspiration. When the vibrating persisted though, Yukina had frowned.

"I'm afraid I'll have to answer that. Please excuse me."

Almost as soon as he was out of the room, things had taken a turn for the worse. By trying to fix the parts of the painting he wasn't satisfied with, Kisa had only made a bigger mess.

Landscapes, flowers or regular objects were the best options for a beginner, Yukina had told him. Abstract worked well too, but Kisa never cared for vague symbolism and the interpretation of it. He thought a landscape would be easy even for someone who had painted once in his life and dumped the final product into the trash right after.

Worst of all, Yukina wouldn't tell him the painting was horrible; he would beam in approval and pride and assure him that practice was the key to unlocking one's potential. The motivational speech already played in Kisa's head like a record, but he didn't want to hear it. He didn't deserve it.

Yukina hadn't come back yet. There was still time to smash a hole in the canvas.

No, that would be unfair. Kisa had sworn that Yukina would get the see his creation no matter what, because he knew nothing would make his lover happier than seeing him try something new. They both knew how little they had in common besides their interest in shoujo manga and sex. Indulging in each other's hobbies not only provided new experiences, but also served as a way to get to know each other better.

Being asked about his hobbies was eye-opening to Kisa. What _did_ he like to do in his spare time (besides getting on top of Yukina)? He had thought long and hard about it with little success. Before he started dating Yukina, he would sometimes go to bars or clubs and have a couple of drinks (often too many) with strangers. He wouldn't want to take Yukina there though; those weren't the best locations for a date with a decent guy like him.

Painting was the better alternative. Yukina had gotten all the tools and supplies they needed from the studio and brought them in along with a couple of old sheets to cover the floor and some of the furniture with. He'd even lent Kisa his coveralls so his clothes wouldn't be covered in paint splatters by the end of it. The sleeves and legs were much too long for Kisa, so he'd had to fold each of them back five times to free his hands and feet. Comfortable it certainly wasn't, but there was one thing he liked about it: the smell. Not the smell of dried paint, but that of the person who had worn it before him.

So what if he had given it a good whiff before the start of his painting lesson? He had done way creepier things in the past. Yukina's scent reminded him of his favorite pastime activities, which took place in the bedroom most of the time—provided that they were patient enough. If they didn't make it, either the couch or a wall sufficed—and this was not the time to be thinking about that!

Feeling a physical reaction, Kisa glanced down. The coveralls being at least four sizes too big worked in his favor. He didn't want to have to explain his situation, so he went back to glaring at the mess on the canvas, palette and brush in hand.

Not much later, Yukina returned to the crime scene with a smile.

"Sorry for the wait. A friend of mine is going through a rough patch, so she needed someone to vent to." He came up next to Kisa and gave the painting a once-over. "Wow, you've made a lot of changes while I was away."

Kisa put the palette down on the sheet-covered table behind him and turned to Yukina. "Can you critique my work?"

"Huh? Oh, I don't know if I should..."

"Go on, tell me what you think. And don't bother being nice about it. I've already found a million things wrong with it."

"Kisa-san, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. It isn't realistic or healthy to expect yourself to be good at everything you do."

The brush in Kisa's hand almost snapped in two. His anger translated itself into bitterness, grumpy and accusatory. "That's easy for you to say. You never seem to struggle with anything. Even when you say you're bad at something, you're not actually that bad at it. How am I supposed to compete with that?"

Yukina peered at him with an intensity that made it feel like he was staring right into his soul, a look of puzzlement crossing his face. "Why would you have to compete with me? Is that why you agreed to this?"

"I..." Kisa bowed his head, both in shame and in thought. The whole point of this had been to give it a go and see how it played out. Whether he was good at painting didn't matter at all, but that didn't stop him from feeling like a disappointment. The words that clung in his throat came out meek and quiet. "I guess I just wanted to make you proud."

He nearly got a heart attack when Yukina rushed towards him and grabbed him by the shoulders. Out of shock he looked up to see that determined expression he knew all too well. A burst of pink had taken up residence on that gorgeous face.

"I'm already proud of you! I'm proud at how much you've grown as a person in the time we've spent together. I'm proud of you for opening up to me and for trying new things, things that you know I'll be better at because I've done them hundreds of times. But you know what? This isn't about me. You don't need to make me proud. You need to learn to be proud of yourself."

Yukina was no longer the only one who was blushing. His grip loosened, but he didn't let go entirely.

"I was wrong. You are bad at something. You never know when to shut up."

"Sometimes our weaknesses are needed to recognize the strenghts of others."

"Don't tell me you made that up on the spot."

Yukina laughed and pressed a kiss against his lover's forehead. "I wish I could, but as I said before, you can't be good at everything."


End file.
